Earned Media Mentions (Implied Links) Are Indeed a Ranking Factor

Brawn Media - Thursday, May 01, 2014

It has been a while now since SEOs started the chatter about brand, product, and service mentions in body content of websites and how Google is quite possibly using those mentions as part of its ranking algorithm.

Most recently, within a Google patent, Google states:

"The system determines a count of independent links for the group (step 302). A link for a group of resources is an incoming link to a resource in the group, i.e., a link having a resource in the group as its target. Links for the group can include express links, implied links, or both. An express link, e.g., a hyperlink, is a link that is included in a source resource that a user can follow to navigate to a target resource. An implied link is a reference to a target resource, e.g., a citation to the target resource, which is included in a source resource but is not an express link to the target resource. Thus, a resource in the group can be the target of an implied link without a user being able to navigate to the resource by following the implied link."

Bleh, too techie! I know. Stay with me here:

An express link is probably the link you’re used to seeing — underlined and clickable. When your site has quality hyperlinks, or express links, your rank typically goes up and you get more organic traffic.
What’s interesting here is that implied links are also counted like express links and they play an integral part of the ranking algorithm. Just for clarity, implied links are textual mentions of your brand, products, and/or services, but not a clickable link. It’s almost like semantic learning, but semantic learning in terms of who your brand is and what products and services are associated with it.
Think of them like citations in a research paper you might have had to struggle through in college.

Why the Heck Should I Care BrawnMedia?

We’ve been involved with, curating, strategizing, and just plain insisting that website owners invest in content creation (on-site and off-). The above confirmation by Google, that implied links play a role in rank, reinforces our strategies for spreading client brand mentions through content online.

Not only should a website owner be getting quality hyperlinks, but making sure that there are also mentions of the brand, products, and services in diverse forms. Such as:

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